This image shows the entrance to the Arcadia Theater. I really liked the color and deco design elements of this theater. Taking pictures on the ship was a challenge for me. There were so many bright surfaces and so many lights the final images just seemed to come out too busy. I tried a couple different attempts at processing this image and at some point I decided to try using Topaz Simplify just to eliminate some of the extraneous reflections and focus more on the color and design elements of the theater entrance.

This picture was taken from the deck of my ship on a recent cruise to the Caribbean. Not much in the way of foreground to make the shot interesting, but I did like the way the sun was lighting the clouds. This image is actually a closer crop from the original. I used my longest lens at 300mm, but the sun was still too small to my liking. I cropped in closer and slightly darkened the exposure to get some more color and a better feeling of sunset light.

When we arrived at Phillipsburg, St. Maarten I saw a sign somewhere claming that the island was the happiest island on Earth. When I saw this sign, I understood why.

This shot was taken just after we got off the ship in Phillipsburg, St. Maarten. Our ship was one of six other cruise ships which were in port that day. Modern cruise ships are huge and I was trying to capture a picture which gave some sense of their size. I think the inclusion of the fence line helps put some scale on these ships. The main reason I like this image, however, is the fact that it gives the impression (to me, at least) that the ships are beached on the sand.

My family and I just returned from a 7 day cruise in the Caribbean. This was our first cruise and I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy it, but for the most part I had a great time. One of the places we visited was the island of St. Maarten/St. Martin. The island is unique in that it is controlled by two different countries, the Dutch on the St. Maarten side and the French on the St. Martin side. For the most part, however, you don’t really notice a difference as you go around the island. The biggest difference is the use of French on signage on the French side and French is spoken on the the French side. English, however, is spoken everywhere. When the cruise ship docks, you can take a water taxi to get to the downtown area of Phillipsburg, which is on the Dutch side. When we got off the water taxi we were greeted with a group of shops selling items to eager tourists. We passed by this one shop which had this interesting collection of items for sale. I got a kick out of the juxtaposition of the ‘Fuck Off’ item with the ‘Welcome’ item.

I love winter (as long as it snows) but sometimes you just need to get away for a bit. I’ll be taking a short break from my blogging activities but will return shortly. In the meantime, I figured I would post this shot that I took on a trip a couple of years ago to North Myrtle Beach, SC. This image has been sitting around waiting for me to decide to do something with it. I’ve always liked the repetition of the chairs and the warm color but I held back posting it anywhere. I just purchased the PhotoTune suite which includes Focal Point 2. I decided to try it out by slightly altering the field of focus. It’s not a big change, but I like the added blur. I also used PhotoTools to bring out just a bit more color and contrast.

Continuing the theme of the last couple of days, this is another shot I took during our recent snowstorm. This barn is located on the other side of the road from where I took the Snowy Trees shot and just up the road from where yesterday’s Headstone picture was taken.

Just down the road from where I took yesterday’s image is a small cemetery. I’ve always felt odd about photographing in a cemetery, but I do find old headstones to be interesting. I suppose it is somewhat cliché to shoot a cemetery in winter, but with a blustery snowstorm going on around me, it just seemed like the right thing to do! The wind was really nasty and cold so I didn’t spend a lot of time here. I tried various angles and focal lengths and ended up liking this one the best.

We received our first snowstorm of the season today and it created a nice opportunity for some winter photography. The weather yesterday was slightly warmer and we had some rain before the snow moved in. As a result, the snow stuck to the limbs of the trees. Early in the afternoon the snow was falling steadily but lightly, not much wind. By mid-afternoon an Alberty Clipper moved in and the wind really picked up. I had gone out around lunchtime to get some city shots in the gentle snowfall and I was planning on going out in the country to get some rural shots. When I went out later in the afternoon I debated about going. The wind was blowing down trees and knocking out dead limbs. I decided to take a short trip outside of town to see what I could find. This shot was taken a couple of miles from my house. On one side of the road was a barn (which I took pictures of) and the other side was the field with these trees in the distance. With the snow falling it created a foggy atmosphere and I liked the way the trees looked in the distance. I shot a handful of shots, focusing on the trees. When I got home and looked at the picture, I noticed the windmill off to the right which I thought added a nice element to the shot.

I’ve been posting a lot of grungy, dark images the past few days and I decided it was time to do something a little more colorful. I took this shot in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2009 and its been sitting in my ‘blog possibilities’ collection for a while so I decided to trot it out. The image shows the Acme Mercantile store on Liberty Street. The store has all sorts of interesting items for sale. I took this shot on a walk I took around town focusing primarily on using my ultra-wide angle lens (7-14 Digital Zuiko 2x crop factor). The image was produced as an HDR from 5 exposures, with some additional processing.